Kaiser Permanente Announces Data Warehouse Project (HIStalk)

Health Catalyst closes $41 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital and announces plans to invest $50 million in product development over the next 24 months. Investors also include customers Kaiser Permanente and Partners HealthCare.

I spoke to CEO Dan Burton and President Brent Dover before the announcement.

Burton says Kaiser will roll out Health Catalyst’s data warehouse platform for all 38 of its hospitals. “While we have worked with other large health systems – earlier in the year we signed with Partners in Boston and Providence – but Kaiser is almost in a class by itself in terms of size and scale. The nature of the first project is system-wide, a terrific test of the scalability of our platform.”

Burton says Kaiser will initially use Health Catalyst for two projects. “They have a specific need for system-wide access to a subset of data around transplant patients,” he explained. Dover added that Kaiser is working on a specific project for diabetic patients in Colorado. “Kaiser is reaching out to diabetic patients. They were going after patients using spreadsheets and complex SQL extracts. They told us Health Catalyst builds a cohort in 180 seconds when it used to take 180 days. This allows them to proactively go after patients for population health management.”

Eleven of Health Catalyst’s customers, including Kaiser, are Epic clients. I asked Burton why Kaiser chose a third-party tool over Epic’s Cogito data warehouse and reporting platform. “In our experience, it’s an apples to oranges comparison,” he said. “Cogito offers basic functionality from a data storage perspective that could meet rudimentary needs. We’re offering a data warehouse as a platform for transformation from an advanced clinical apps perspective.” Dover added, “When I worked at Medicity, customers always asked for analytics tools. No client really knows what they want to analyze – it’s a never-ending list. The market demands an incredibly flexible platform. We have 17 case studies and none of them have anything to do with each other – it’s what each of them needed to improve quality and cost.”

I asked Burton about the $50 million in product development to create 200 advanced clinical applications. “A couple of our longstanding customers, Texas Children’s and Stanford, worked on specific areas to identify inefficiency and variation of care in heart failure and asthma patients, showing where the variation existed, what needed to change, and tracking progress, even tracking the return on investment of the improvement. At a CEO level, said they need to target 20 applications per year over the next five years to measurably and meaningfully bend the cost curve to allow them to not only survive, but thrive and lead. That opened our eyes that what our clients are seeking is a roadmap. We decided to become a company that offers hundreds of analytic applications so we can be a long-term partner to help these health systems transform themselves.”